The Latimer Effect
by Stony Knight
Summary: Episode: Human Nature; Timothy Latimer makes a decision after seeing the vision of Martha Jones from the future when she bumps into him. Will John Smith finally believe that the Doctor is more than just a dream?
1. Chapter 1

**Story Title:** The Latimer Effect

 **A/N:** I'm not saying I didn't like "The Family of Blood", but I do wish "Human Nature" would have gone in a slightly different direction at the end. And that's what inspired this story.

 **Disclaimer:** Doctor Who and all related characters/spin-offs belong to the BBC.

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 _*This story starts just after the Doctor throws Martha out of his quarters for slapping him._

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Timothy blinked hard as a vision of a Martha Jones from the future danced before his eyes. He did not register the fact that he called out to her after she bumped into him, and he barely heard her reply. "Not now, Tim!"

He sensed that something was terribly wrong. A foreboding hovered underneath the surface of his strange vision, throbbing just behind his eyes. He felt the urge to do something about it, but without knowing what was coming, he had no idea what action he could or should take. Not for the first time, Timothy Latimer wished he had some control over his visions. What was the use of seeing flashes of the future if he couldn't understand them?

Turning back in the direction he had originally been heading, the boy shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and began walking again. His fingers brushed over flat, round metal and a whispering voice echoed in his mind. It was the watch – Mr. Smith's fob watch! The lingering foreboding of his vision retreated somewhat as the whisper gained strength, and suddenly Timothy realized there was something he could do. He just hoped this course of action wouldn't result in Mr. Smith giving him a beating.

0000000

"I don't understand. How could I forget about a fob watch laying on a mantelpiece which I pass by several times a day?"

Joan watched as Mr. Smith tugged at his hair in both frustration and embarrassment, leaving it sticking up in a fantastic disarray. She was surprised the man had not yet started to pace the room, his agitation was so great.

"I know I'm not a particularly tidy person, in my living quarters or my mind," the professor shot her an apologetic smile as he gestured at the mess around them, "but I look at that mantel every day. Letters, spare pens, paperweights, my tinder box, all things I use every morning before classes begin and again once they end, and I keep them right there on that ledge."

"John, I'm not sure you'll manage to find an answer as to why you forgot about your fob watch, but perhaps it would help simply to find it first and then ask these questions?" Joan reached out to capture Mr. Smith's hand as he started to raise it to his head again. Smiling softly, she used her free hand to smooth the ruffled mess of his hair back to some semblance of order. "Martha may be confused as to why the watch is important, but I believe she wasn't wrong in labeling it as such. I remember it being intricately engraved, John, and no man spends that kind of money on a timepiece unless it's important to him."

"Thanks, but that does nothing to make me feel better about it." The teacher sighed. "I suppose I should apologize to Martha and ask her to help me find it again."

"And what on Earth do you have to apologize for?" Joan asked, receiving a shrug in answer.

"I don't know. I just feel like I own her an apology, the poor, simple girl. It's not her fault that she can't discern the difference between fact and fiction."

"I don't believe her lack of understanding justifies her slapping you. A maid raising her hand to a teacher and her superior? She deserves a beating, John, at the very least, not an apology."

"Hmm, a beating, yes, but I dismissed her…"

Before either of them could comment further, a knock on the door interrupted their conversation.

"Ah, come in!" Mr. Smith called, stepping away from the fireplace and putting some distance between himself and Nurse Redfern. The door opened to reveal a nervous-looking Timothy Latimer.

"Mr. Latimer, what can I do for you?" the professor asked, giving the boy an encouraging smile as he picked up on his student's mood.

"Sir, I… I'm sorry," Timothy said, drawing up his courage as he pulled the watch from his pocket. It would do him no good to delay his confession, and so he held forth the timepiece without hesitation. "I shouldn't have taken this, and I'm now returning it to you."

"Is that my fob watch?" Mr. Smith glanced between Nurse Redfern and the item in question, earning a nod from the woman in confirmation. "Mr. Latimer, why would you take my watch?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but I doubt you'd believe me if I told you." The boy bowed his head in embarrassment.

"Try me," the teacher requested as he reached for the watch.

Their fingers brushed briefly, and Timothy blinked as a new vision flashed before his eyes: Mr. Smith, as the Doctor, standing before a wooden, blue box inside a barn, pointing a buzzing object about the size of a fountain pen at an unseen adversary. Timothy gasped as the vision released him as suddenly as it had come, and he found himself staring up into his teacher's surprised gaze.

"What was that?" Mr. Smith shook his head as if he was dazed.

"You saw it too, didn't you?" Timothy asked. "Just now, that vision."

"I… How? It was just a dream. How can you see my dreams?"

"I don't believe they're just dreams, Prof. Smith." The boy hesitated for a moment before explaining further. "The fob watch, it's shown me numerous visions of the Doctor. And forgive me for saying this, sir, but I doubt they're a coincidence. The Doctor is real, and you are him."

"This is nonsense. The Doctor is just a character, stories, all fiction!" John shook his head. "I don't know how you know about him, Latimer, but it would be best if you just forgot about all of this. I'll even ignore the fact that you stole from me if you promise not to bring this up again."

"But sir, I can't. Something's wrong. Something's coming. And I think the only one who can possibly deal with it is the Doctor. Please, sir."

"You're starting to sound like Martha. She was just in here raving about how aliens had done something to Jenny."

"Martha's a part of this, too, though! I've seen her, just like I've seen the Doctor. She's different, not alien but from the future." Timothy kept trying to convince Mr. Smith of this extraordinary truth, not knowing why it was important but not willing to give up either. "Please, sir, you need to find her and talk to her. She knows the truth."

"Fine! Fine, we'll go find Martha, and I'll set you both straight once and for all. Then there will be no more talk of these Doctor fantasies." The teacher pulled his coat from its hook and grabbed a second one for Nurse Redfern. "Perhaps you'll have more luck talking sense into these two should I fail again. Some things just need a woman's touch, or perhaps a nurse's."

"Or perhaps it's a combination of the two." Joan suggested, taking the proffered coat.

"I don't suppose you have any clue as to where Martha ran off to, do you, Mr. Latimer?" Mr. Smith asked.

"There's an abandoned barn near the edge of the school's property. I think she may have gone there." Timothy replied, remembering clues from the vision he had shared with his teacher. "Please, follow me."

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 **End A/N:** Shall I continue with this story? The amount of interest I get for this will help determine whether it becomes just a two-part story or if I develop it into something more than that. Reviews are much appreciated!

\- Stony Knight


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of Doctor Who… I just like borrowing it for writing practice.

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Martha sat curled on the jump seat in the TARDIS's console room, holding tight to the Doctor's brown trench coat as his list of instructions played once again on the monitor. She had searched through the coat's pockets several times over, looking for the missing fob watch, but she had come up empty-handed with each effort. Now all she could do was cling to the garment and try to hold back her tears. She was scared. What if she never found the watch? What if the Doctor never came back to her? What if she ended up stuck in the 1910s and never made her way home again? Her family wouldn't know what had happened to her; she would have simply vanished with no warning and no goodbye.

" _Four: You… don't let me abandon you._ "

"Abandon?" Martha snorted at the recording. "No, you definitely didn't abandon me. You threw me out, and it's all my fault. I should have kept the fob watch on my person."

She swallowed down a sob and clutched the trench coat tighter. Under normal circumstances, Martha would have been embarrassed over how emotional she currently felt, but the past weeks working as a maid and suffering the dismissive racism of the time period had worn on her. She no longer had the strength to hold her head up and cling to hope. With the disappearance of the fob watch, her surety of escaping from this life had evaporated too. She may never see her Doctor again.

Martha breathed a world-weary sigh and stood up from the jump seat. Supposing that Mr. Smith and the headmaster would not permit her to return to the school, she decided to go and change into her normal clothing. Before she could head for the wardrobe, however, the door to the TARDIS creaked open. Martha shifted to see past the time rotor, both curious and afraid to know who had discovered the wooden blue box hidden in the abandoned barn.

"Tim?" she whispered in surprise. The boy crept up the ramp to the console, staring with wide-eyed wonder. Soon after, Mr. Smith and Nurse Redfern followed him, each creeping in with equal measures of caution and curiosity.

"What is this place?" Joan asked but received no answer. Martha was staring intently at Mr. Smith; she didn't want to miss a second of his reaction to seeing the TARDIS for the first time since erasing his memories of life as a Time Lord.

"It's bigger on the inside." He eventually murmured. He glanced back at the doors as if he were thinking of running, but his irrepressible desire for discovery won out over his now-ebbing fear. Turning back to the center console, he spotted Martha hovering near the monitor on the opposite side.

"What is that voice?" Mr. Smith asked. "It sounds like my voice."

"It is your voice." Martha replied. She dropped the trench coat onto the jump seat behind her and reached out to fiddle with the controls of the monitor. "It's a video recording, a list of instructions for me, that you made before you gave up your memories of being the Doctor. Here, I'll restart it from the beginning."

Mr. Smith stepped around the console and watched as Martha adjusted the unknown controls until the monitor above them dissolved into a flickering mass of black and white speckles.

"You might want to make yourself comfortable. The list is twenty-three items long, and you do have a tendency to go off on strange tangents from time to time." Martha glanced up at the man beside her, hoping to see a hint of the Doctor in his eyes, but there was no familiarity there.

"What exactly is this place?" Joan asked again as she rounded the console on Martha's other side.

"It's called the TARDIS," the younger woman replied, "which stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It's a time machine."

"I don't believe you."

"And I don't really care what you believe, Nurse Redfern." Martha shrugged. "If you are too stubborn to acknowledge what exists directly before your eyes, then there's nothing I can do for you. Now, you can either sit down beside Mr. Smith and watch this video recording, or you can turn around and walk right back out those doors and forget about him and the TARDIS both. But you can't have one without the other."

Not wanting to say anything more, Martha set the Doctor's message to play and stepped away from the center console.

"Martha? Where are you going?" Timothy asked when she continued on toward a second doorway.

"To change into my real clothes, Tim. The Family of Blood has found us, and if I'm going to come up with a plan to stop them, I need to ditch the whole maid persona. Things would be so much easier if I could get him to remember who he is." She shot a resigned look over her shoulder at Mr. Smith before glancing at Timothy again. "Why don't you join Mr. Smith and Nurse Redfern, Tim, and catch a glimpse of the Doctor as I know him?"

As Martha slipped out of the console room, Timothy stepped around the jump seat until he could see the monitor without obstructing the others' views. The boy watched with rapt attention as the recording played, smiling at the sincerity of some of the instructions and laughing at the absurdity of others. This was a different side of the Doctor than what the fob watch had showed to him. The watch had given him images of a warrior and defender of humanity; this message, however, gave a glimpse of a man willing to lay down his strength and place his trust in a dear friend.

Just as the message wrapped up with the Doctor thanking Martha, the young woman returned to the console room wearing the same clothing Timothy had seen in his vision of her from the future. She stepped over to the monitor controls and turned off the screen as its display switched to flickering black and white speckles again.

"This Doctor, he's absolutely mad, isn't he?" John asked quietly when Martha turned to face him and Nurse Redfern.

"I thought that, too, when I first met you," Martha admitted. "But I'd like to think I know better now."

"He said that John Smith is just a character that he made up, but I'm him. I'm John Smith! How can I have just forgotten all this? How can everything I know of being John Smith be false?"

Martha's heart clenched at the anguish in the Doctor's voice. She had never imagined that rediscovering his identity as a Time Lord could be painful for him, but she could now see a growing fear in his eyes. Martha slipped closer to the jump seat and wrapped her arms around him, wanting to comfort her friend.

"Martha, what have I told you about being overly-familiar with Mr. Smith?" Joan scolded. But even as the nurse spoke, John was tugging Martha closer so that he could lay his head against her shoulder.

"What of my memories of being John Smith? Are they really all just fairy tales, Martha? Is this whole life of mine really just a lie?" the Doctor asked. Martha raised a hand from his shoulder and threaded her fingers through his messy hair.

"It's neither truth nor lies," she replied. "The memories are just stories that you made up. But John Smith himself, his humor, his caring, his interests and skills, his personality, those are all part of the Doctor. John Smith is the Doctor, but the Doctor is so much more than John Smith. So, please, try not to be afraid."

"And what of you? Who are you in all of this?" John glanced up at Martha with his sorrowful, brown eyes, seeking reassurance and trusting she would deliver. At the moment, she knew it would be easy to lie to him and get him to believe whatever she wanted in regard to their relationship, but as soon as he got his memories back – if he ever got his memories back – the Doctor would realize the truth.

"I'm your companion, your friend. We travel together on these adventures, and I keep you company inside this big, lonely box of yours. And we help people, save them, protect them. We always seem to find trouble, and somehow, we always manage to defeat it and put things right. Together."

"You love him, don't you? But he doesn't feel the same?"

"You seem to be a bit oblivious to it, but I can't really blame you," Martha replied. "That girl from your journal, Rose? You loved her and lost her somewhat recently. It happened just before we met."

"You speak as if you've known the Doctor for years, and yet you say he's still in mourning for a girl he lost before you ever met?" Joan questioned, doubtful.

"The Doctor is a time traveler. We've seen and done a lot in a surprisingly short amount of linear time. But beyond that, the Doctor is over nine hundred years old. With a lifespan so long, do you honestly believe he would just forget the friends and loved ones he's lost after less than a year?" Martha glared at the Matron and hugged the Doctor a bit tighter. "He's a good man. I wish you could see him as I've seen him, but without the fob watch, I have no idea how to restore his memories."

"Actually, Martha," Timothy spoke up from where he still stood behind them, "I had the watch. I gave it back to Mr. Smith just before we all came here looking for you."

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 **End A/N:** So endeth the chapter… sorry, but I've decided to stop the scene here because I'll be expanding on this story a bit more than I originally anticipated. Please review! Hearing from readers helps to jumpstart my imagination.

\- Stony Knight


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